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M.C. Escher’s visual inquiries

The Amazing World of MC Escher is a new exhibit at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. It will be there from June 27 to September 27. The exhibit prompted a nice piece on Escher in The Guardian. Author Steven Poole mentions, but does not much explore, the relationship between Escher’s work […]

Savants, neurons, and ants

Jason Padgett, author of the book Struck by Genius, appeared on CBS This Morning on April 24. On May 5, livescience also did a piece on him and his book. Padgett was assaulted in 2002 and suffered a severe concussion. But, following this head injury, he acquired an extraordinary facility for seeing mathematics. He is, […]

Mathematics, movement, music and Leonardo

I’ve always been intrigued by the sensation of movement in music. And it is fair to say that it was my first calculus class that led me to graduate study in mathematics because, for the first time, I saw movement in mathematics. My fascination with each of these was nudged again by an interview with […]

Ideals in Art and Mathematics: What gets us there?

Most of us begin drawings with lines. And even though those lines may not be in the subject of a rendering, they are nonetheless perceived. Some of the visual information we use to re-present our experience in a drawing is also used in mathematics, geometry in particular. A difficult question to answer but an interesting […]